That's a good point. I thought the Russian civil war was already happening at that time, so it enabled everyone in Russia to focus on that one alone. Is that incorrect?
I'd have to defer to an actual historian here for the full details, but my understanding of the history is that the "whites" that the Bolsheviks fought in the civil war were funded and aided by foreign powers (Britain, etc.), and that that funding and intervention began the moment Brest-Litovsk was signed, but then later transitioned into the full civil war scenario.
Of course it all depends on how you draw definitional lines around civil war vs revolution, etc.